Sex for Sale
Director: Chang Tseng-chai
Year: 1974
Rating: 6.0
Behind this rather
misleading tawdry title lies the hidden heart of an old fashioned melodrama,
but they sprinkle it with enough nudity and sex to give it an aura of being
an adult film. Interestingly, the male lead is played by Chin Han who became
the king of Taiwanese “weepies” during the 1970’s. The previous year he had
starred in “Outside the Window” (1973), a very popular misty-eyed romance
co-starring Brigitte Lin in her debut. I kept thinking throughout how shocked
the young and innocent Brigitte must have been to see Chin Han (who she became
involved with) rolling in and out of bed with everyone and dropping his pants
as if at a command performance. He also does an enormous amount of mashing
of lips with a kissing technique that resembled a hungry man digging into
a rare and juicy steak. After the many close-ups of this mouth-to-mouth assault
and battery, it’s a wonder Brigitte let him anywhere near her without a protective
mouth guard.
Many of the so-called Shaw “sex” films from this period seem to like having
it both ways. Though they deal out titillation like a game of Three Card
Monte, underneath it they also want to apparently communicate a conservative
moralistic message. Films such as The Pure and the Evil, Diary of a Lady
Killer, Women of Desire and The Girlie Bar are filled with libidinous activities,
but in the end these sexual urgings often bring on the depressing downfall
of the characters. I suppose from a missionary point of view this might make
perfect sense – bring the sinners into the theater with visions of sexual
promiscuity, but send them home wanting to keep their peckers in their pants!
This one does as well to some extent. For much of its running time it is
an interesting story about one man’s sexual discovery in contemporary Hong
Kong, but in the final third it begins to tilt almost laughably towards heavy
handed drama.
Chin Han comes to Hong Kong from a small village to make it in the big city.
He doesn’t have much going for him and is unable to find any work. He goes
to an unemployment agency where the owner (Tina Chin Fei) eyes him up like
a prized bull and invites him into her office. Strip she tells him if you
want a job. Chin reluctantly does so down to his underwear. The underwear
too, she purrs. He does so. Tina compliments him on his physical frame, as
her eyes remain glued to a much lower part of his body. He passes the test
and she takes him to a model shoot for bathing suits. The female model is
Ai Ti (a Taiwanese actress in her debut) and the two eventually become friends.
She runs a modeling school and invites him to come by sometime.
In the meantime, Chin has to pass another test and he takes this one under
the sheets back at Tina’s house. Tina did for lipstick in the 70’s what Carrie
Ng did for it in the 90’s. Her red sculptured lips look like an open invitation
that reads “Entrance - Men Only”. Tina came from Taiwan to Hong Kong in 1963
and was able to join the Shaw training classes. After graduating she got
a role in Hong Kong Nocturne and then put her trademark to good use in her
next film, Operation Lipstick. She continued making films as well as becoming
a host on television into the mid-70's. She married and retired in 1977,
but left many lipstick smeared shirts behind her. At one point in the film,
Chin calls her an old woman and a pig when he tires of her and wants to stop
servicing her, but I had my hand up volunteering to take his place - she
has oodles of sex appeal.
Chin came to Hong Kong a very naive man – he had only had sexual experience
with a Malaysian girlfriend and he didn’t drink or dance – this was soon
to be remedied as he begins a journey of sexual escapades, takes up with
drink to keep him fueled, tips heavily at nudie bars and worst of all begins
wearing chintzy wide collared shirts (though he sadly never learns to dance).
Unknown to him, he is a stud and everyone wants a piece of him – what piece
you can figure out for yourself. First is an older crippled woman (Ha Ping)
who hires him to help wheelchair her around – and then assist in taking baths
– and then much more. Others that come on to him include a sexually liberated
model (Lou Bing-qing), a prostitute (Helen Ko), a landlady who gives him
the option of paying rent or taking it out in trade and a singer.
The singer though is a guy – played by Yi Ta who was apparently a popular
romantic novelist at the time and wrote this screenplay based on one of his
books – who invites Chin to share his bed when Chin has no place to stay
– “it’s big enough for both of us”. The one Chin really loves though is Ai
Ti – but she wants only friendship and refuses to hurt her business by becoming
involved with Chin. After one such rejection he turns to Yi Ta – “I hate
women. Why can’t I be more like you? Teach me how to love men”. Now this
was getting weird. I was expecting Yi to bring out the “How to Become Homosexual
for Dummies” book, but instead he says, “Well if you really want me to” and
gets downs on his knees to show him what a man can offer. Calling Brigitte
Lin, where are you?
The film is very nicely shot and makes great use of color and design. Having
seen Chin Han in more Brigitte “weepies” than anyone should, I have to say
his performance here is a nice surprise. In the “weepies” he is usually the
stiff, silent boring type, but here he shows some easy hick charm and takes
on a role that certainly was much more risqué and controversial than
the films that made him a star. It also had to be quite unusual for a film
to cover homosexuality back at that time – and in a fairly sympathetic manner
even though the character does fall back on the stereotype of a mincing,
overly sensitive gay man with a clean apartment!
